Author: Clinton

A new update is rolling out for Google Pixel Buds that I suspect most owners will greatly appreciate it.  The controls of Pixel Buds have always been a bit… weird in some ways and it looks like Google is listening to user feedback to try to improve them.

There are two big tap control changes in this update.  First, if you triple-tap the right earbud, you can manually turn on or off your Pixel Buds.  Second, if you are listening to music, you can skip a track by double-tapping the right earbud.  Previously, for whatever reason, Google had this configured to check notifications.  While playing music.  Yeah, it made no sense to me either.

A new feature is starting to roll out to the Google WiFi app that brings the ability for you to test individual device connectivity on your wireless network.  The feature will allow you to see the connection health of an individual device on the network which can be handy if you are troubleshooting a constantly buffering Chromecast device as an example.

Today, the Google WiFi app can test the overall network health and its connection to the Internet.  That will remain in the app but will be augmented by this new feature.  You will be able to select a device and test its connection which will give you more information on the performance of that device, not just the overall network’s performance.

Somethings things just don’t go as planned and Chrome 66 could fall into that category.  The update to the browser for MacOS, Windows, Android, iOS, and Chrome OS rolled out progressively starting in late April up through last week depending on the platform.  It came with an autoplay blocking feature that would prevent most websites from autoplaying audio and video content.  The problem is, it broke things.

Specifically, multiple reports came to the Chromium team about web games being broken after the update to Chrome 66 as well as some corporate web-based demos.  In response, Google has partially rolled back the feature with plans to reintroduce it later.

Apple has released a fifth and what is likely to be the final beta build of MacOS 10.13.5 to beta testers.  The new build was released yesterday, along side the 5th beta for iOS 11.4, and should be available to everyone who has a registered device in the Apple Beta Program.

The new build is 17F70a and given the timing of the release as it relates to WWDC and the size of the update, it is likely this is the Release Candidate version of the next build of MacOS High Sierra.  WWDC kicks off at the first of June where it is expected that MacOS 10.14 will be shown for the first time publicly along with iOS 12.

Amazon has put another great one day sale together on a wide range of SanDisk storage products.  The sale is today only and you can find all of the products that are sale here at Amazon.  The sale covers everything from MicroSD cards for Android phones and other devices to high capacity USB drives for your Chromebook, MacBook or Windows 10 PC.

Some of the deals on SanDisk storage today on Amazon include a MicroSD 64GB card for $15.99 and there is also the whopping 256GB USB-C Flash Drive that is down to $51.99, a savings of over $25.  That drive will work with modern laptops like the MacBook Pro and Chromebooks while there are still some great deals on USB-A drives too.

Google has made a pretty significant announcement with regards to Google Drive today.  In a blog post, the Mountain View company announced that Google Drive would be rebranded as Google One and bring with it more storage and features.

The most visible change to Google One over Drive is the tiers and pricing structure.  For $1.99 per month, you can pick up 100GB of storage.  That is the same price as today but if you need just a little bit more, there will be a 200GB tier that will be $2.99.  Perhaps the bigger news is that current 1TB account which is $9.99 per month will double to 2TB at no additional charge.  This puts a huge amount of pressure on other cloud storage providers like Dropbox and Microsoft’s OneDrive.